The Swedish games industry’s annual Computer Games Industry 2023: Game Developer Indexhas revealed that despite the impact of the pandemic, the metrics for turnover, the number of new companies and employees are all increasing.
The report finds that in total, games developed in Sweden have been downloaded nearly seven billion times, and – in a handy soundbite that’s sure to catch on – that, globally, every fourth person has played a game created in Sweden.
In the last year Swedish gaming companies increased turnover by 18% to SEK 32.5 billion making 2022 a record-breaking year for turnover. In total, including subsidiaries abroad, the Swedish industry generated turnover of SEK 86.5 billion, an increase of 47% compared to 2021.
The report concludes that the majority of Swedish gaming companies are profitable and the industry contributes several billions to the Swedish treasury. The ten most profitable companies alone cumulitivey paid over SEK 2.6 billion in corporation tax on their profits in 2022.
Fresh talent required
“Swedish game development is an export industry that operates on a largely global market,” says Johanna Nylander, Head of Analysis at the Computer Games Industry. “Growth in the industry occurs both in established growing companies and in new businesses and the development of new game ideas. This year’s numbers show how well the Swedish industry is doing in the global economic situation.”
Drilling down into the data we see that 44% of all new 2022 hires were women. An increase from just 26% the year earlier. And remarkably ten years ago in 2012, a total of just under 300 women worked at gaming companies in Sweden. Ten years later, that figure has risen to 1977, a 23% of the entire industry.
While the total number of start-ups in Sweden decreased by 7% in 2022 compared to the previous year, within game development, 104 new companies were started in 2022 – an indication that the Swedish industry is growing stably. While the news that the number of new games companies is increasing in Sweden, the report highlight the fact that such growth can’t go unfuelled and that the long term the supply of skills is the biggest challenge now facing this growth.
In December 2022 there were 939 active companies which including the 50 newly added older companies that changed operations to game development. This is an increase of 20% when compared to 2021. In 2022 the industry employed a total of 8,445 people on site in Sweden and approximately 16,500 people abroad. Almost half of all companies that exist today have been registered in the last five years. Of the companies that exist today, 16 of these have existed since the nineties.
“We really have all the prerequisites for the future, except one: competence supply,” says Per Strömbäck, chancellor of the Computer Games industry. The audience is growing globally, many want to play Swedish-developed games, we have the channels for the audience and are good at making games with high quality. But we need more employees, partly in the form of training, but it also needs to be easier to bring in staff from other countries. With the right conditions, the industry can continue to grow.”
